


Into the Dark

by Rodimiss



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen, POV Varric, Warden Carver Hawke, asshole siblings who really do love each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-04
Updated: 2015-11-04
Packaged: 2018-04-29 20:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5142164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rodimiss/pseuds/Rodimiss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Varric figures them for blight orphans, inasmuch as adults are “orphans,” because they argue and yell and would never admit to clinging to each other like they’re all the other has. Genevieve and Carver Hawke, their relationship and significant moments, through Varric’s eyes, from the first days he knew them to the Deep Roads.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Into the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> I make reference to what Genevieve and Carver look like (and Carver's appearance I use is not his default one) and I have screencaps and a drawing of them [here](http://wardencommanderrodimiss.tumblr.com/post/132293742214/ive-been-writing-about-them-so-i-wanted-to-haul)  
> and for those without a scattered knowledge of medieval weaponry, a halberd is a battle-axe on the end of a long pole, like ~5 feet/1.5 meters long.

Varric knows people. It’s his job, to have a wide-ranging network of contacts that he can reach out to and get help with a word; and his other job is telling stories, and what’s a story without its characters? Varric  _knows_ people, and Varric knows  _people._

He’s known a lot of people, prides himself on being able to easily read those that he doesn’t know (yet); and he knows, instantly, that the Hawke siblings will be very interesting people to know.

They don’t offer him much, not at first; he’s sullen and she’s sarcastic; she fights with a halberd and he a sword; they fight side by side and back to back with a practiced ease, though Varric wonders if they used to trip all over each other. He thinks she is oldest, at first, because she just goes by their surname, which is something that only the head of the family would do. Then he thinks that  _he_  is oldest, because of the way he snaps at her when she does risky dangerous stupid things; and because of the way she ducks around behind his back to do  _more_ risky dangerous stupid things. (“You’ll bring the templars down on us, you can’t do this!” he says when they’ve turned away from the warden Anders to discuss his terms. “We need the maps,” she says, “it’ll be fine.” And she turns and tells Anders he has a deal, and her brother storms out of the clinic. And then weeks later when she gets a letter asking for her help with a sensitive issue - the templar Thrask and his sympathy towards apostates - she comes to Varric to gather a crew and tells him no, Carver’s not coming, Carver doesn’t know. Carver worries too much: “Carver might be a stubborn insolent fool, but so are you, and he at least has some sense in his head,” the guard captain tells her. Varric laughs.)

So then he figures them for twins. And some of the similarities might just be  _sibling_  things - their skin tone, their hair texture, their faces both square, eyes both blue - but they’re the same height and have the same build and there’s just  _something_  that Varric can’t explain. Half of the time they’re speaking they’re arguing, but they cling to each other - and will never admit to that - like they’re all the other has, and he assumed that they were war orphans (inasmuch as an adult can be an orphan) until Hawke talked him into coming home with them one day. She’s a charmer, when she wants to be, which isn’t that often.

Anyway, he met their mother and their uncle, and that didn’t clarify anything.

Twins, he decides, because that’s all that makes sense

He asks, one day, just casually, when they’ve been assaulted by the carta in the Undercity because they poked their noses in where they didn’t belong, like always. It’s just the three of them. There hasn’t been much of that, anymore, just the three of them, because Hawke keeps meeting stranger and stranger people who have fallen into their ragtag band of misfits. There’s Aveline, who can’t be with them as often, and Merrill, an elf mage who left her clan for the city and who Hawke seemed to adopt instantly, and Anders, the warden. Hawke is a whirlpool pulling people in – dragging them down? 

So they’re standing in the middle of bodies, Hawke poking around in pockets for coin purses with the tip of her blade, and Varric asks if they’re twins, because he’s noticed -

He doesn’t even get the question out because they both shout  _“NO!”_  at him, with the kind of vehemence that suggests that he maybe mistook them for lovers. And he holds his hands up and backs off, because Carver looks ready to kill, and Hawke’s jaw is set like she’s swallowing down a hundred things she wants to say. “Alright, alright. So which one of you’s older? I’ve been trying to figure it out for a month.”

“She is,” Carver says, nodding at his sister.

“That wasn’t my first guess,” Varric says, and Hawke rolls her eyes, and Carver seems to smile for a second, and the moment passes, but without explanation of their reaction.

He thinks he might have a guess when he also finds out why the siblings - or maybe just Carver - are so afraid of templars. He  _thought_  it was just a general thing, that they fear templars the way they fear the city guard, because the templars are just as active of a law force in everyone’s everyday life, and Varric doesn’t want to say that they’re criminals, but they’re definitely doing unsavory things, and if one of them gets locked up for breaking into the Gallows or whatever, it’s that much harder for the other to take care of their mother.

Then they’re in the middle of a fight that’s gone south, and Hawke has left Carver’s side to defend Merrill, and Varric’s trying to keep the mercenaries away from himself when he sees two bearing down on Carver’s undefended back. And Hawke yells “Get down!” and he drops to the ground to avoid the fireball that she throws at his assailants.

“You’re a mage?” Varric says when the fight is over, because he feels like this is the sort of thing that you mention to someone that you’re planning on having a long-term working relationship with.

“You’re a dwarf, you shouldn’t have a problem with that,” Carver says tersely.

“I don’t, I’d just like to have all of our assets laid out in front of us.” Varric looks at Hawke. She’s saying something to Merrill, showing the elf the not-bladed end of her halberd. Varric thought that end was just decorative stones and things. Apparently it’s a mage staff in disguise. Clever. “So you, Junior, you gonna start shooting lightning from your fingers too?”

Carver presses his lips together and looks away. “Nope, just me.” Hawke answers for him. “Just me who’s got to worry about getting locked up in the Gallows and getting stripped of all my free will.”

Varric wants to say that, from everything he’s seen, Carver worries about it too, possibly more, but he thinks they’re all aware of that fact. He thinks this might answer the twin question: do both twins always get magic? Probably, he thinks, though it’s really not his area of expertise. He’s always seen some resentment simmering between the two siblings - there’s no doubt they’d go to the ends of Thedas for each other, but there’s ugly things that bubble up, too - and this,  _magic,_  could be the reason. Hawke got the gift; Carver… didn’t. Carver is sensitive to that fact. Drawing that direct comparison of all their similarities by calling them twins leaves Carver thinking of their major difference. And Hawke knows how he feels, and that’s why she does things like answer that question the way she did:  _just me who’s the target of the templars._

Varric still thinks he’s missing something.

The siblings are missing something, too, and it’s another month before he hears, in a conversation between Carver and Merrill wherein they reminisce about Ferelden, the name “Bethany.”

On a day that’s Varric and Hawke and Merrill, outside of the city, collecting elfroot and other useful plants - Carver is hunting for anyone that could use a hired blade - Varric asks. Hawke purses her lips together. “Where did you hear that name?” she asks tersely.

“Heard Junior talking to Daisy,” Varric says, and Merrill’s ears perk up and then flatten.

“Was something supposed to be a secret?” she asks nervously. “Was he not supposed to talk about her? I don’t know why it would be but you sound angry, so-”

“No, it’s fine,” Hawke says. “I was just surprised. It’s good, that he’s opening up a little.” She sighs and runs her hand through her hair. “Bethany’s our sister. She and Carver are twins… were. Were twins. An ogre snapped her spine on our way out of Ferelden.”

“Oh, Maker,” Varric says. “Sensitive topic. Don’t have to say more.”

So there were Hawke twins. They just didn’t include  _Hawke._

“We don’t talk about her because we end up yelling at each other when we do,” Hawke continues. She might not be talking to any of them. She might be thinking out loud. “‘Cause he was supposed to protect his mage sisters and he couldn’t do a thing for Beth and now I don’t make  _protecting me_  easy.”

“She was a mage?” Varric asks, because that means his theory about why they were so adamant that they weren’t twins was wrong, but it’s also somehow  _right_. How inadequate must you feel with a mage older sister and a mage twin sister, but you alone aren’t. And then he asks, “And you lost your sister and your home to the blight and you’re going back to the Deep Roads?”

“Yeah, Beth was a mage. Father, me, and Beth. Now there’s just me, and I keep ditching Carver to fight templars and free mages and every time we talk about Beth he’s thinking about how he was supposed to protect her and didn’t and then he thinks that I’ll get killed like she did and he’s supposed to have stopped it, too.”

She tries to throw a stalk of elfroot down forcefully into the sack they have. Elfroot doesn’t throw well. She’s definitely talking mostly to herself. Sometimes you just have to get these things out. “He told me I got her killed, once. I don’t think he meant it. Better say that to me than say that to himself. And I’m the oldest, so shouldn’t I be the protector, except when Father died Carver was fifteen and suddenly he was taking care of everyone, and I was twenty, and useless, and he’s angry about it all.”

“You’re not useless,” Merrill says.

“Not anymore,” Hawke says. “I was, before everything changed and I had to change with it. Trying to make up for all those years things weren’t fair to Carver. So, Deep Roads. We can go to the Deep Roads, maybe get killed, maybe get rich; or we can keep taking tiny mercenary jobs, maybe get killed, not get rich, barely have enough to get by.” Hawke smiles. It’s a grim look. “And there’s nothing safer. No one wants to hire Fereldans, and anyone who did filled the position last year while Carver and I were stuck with the mercenaries. The Red Iron,  _Maker,_ we’d both rather live with Gamlen for the rest of our lives than go back to working for them. I can’t join the guard, Aveline won’t risk it, and she won’t take Carver because he has issues taking orders. Andraste’s ass, he was a soldier, he wouldn’t be happy about it but he would make a fine guardsman.”

She plucks up more elfroot. “I mean, she would probably take him if we had no other options for supporting ourselves. If the expedition never was or if it fails and also if I die or something, maybe then.” She throws back her head and laughs. “Or he could join the templars.”

“Er,” Merrill says.

“Assuming the expedition got us nothing but fifty sovereigns in the hole and we can’t get any of our freelance contacts to find us consistent jobs and if I died and Aveline still refused to let the guard consider him as a recruit, maybe then he’d join the templars,” Hawke says. “By which I mean, we’ll face darkspawn in the Deep Roads when we’ve seen them destroy everything we’ve ever had because all the alternatives suck even more.”

“Why do you have to go at all?” Merrill asks. “What’s wrong with living in Lowtown? You’re doing fine there as you are.”

Varric’s heard the story before; about the estate that Hawke and Carver don’t give a shit about but that their mother wants back, and they’ll do anything for her, but all the jobs they can find in the city are just keeping themselves fed, and they need some big break to get enough coin to either buy back the estate or get the viscount to even listen to their pleas. (Not that they’re going to bribe the viscount, but you need to besomeone, have _something_ , to get the nobles to look your way. The old name doesn’t mean anything. New coin does.)

But now knowing about Bethany, he wonders what their mother thinks, her two surviving children venturing into the dark.

It’s still a long time coming, the fifty sovereigns, the expedition. In Carver, Varric can better see the resentment that Hawke talked about; but he notices, now, what she said about him being the protector. Two real moments stick out. The first time is small; a job they picked up from their old mercenary company that looked to be reclaiming a supply of smuggled lyrium that turns into Hawke making eyes at the glowing elf that needs their help killing slaveholding Tevinters. Then Hawke sets a couple shades on fire - she’s been more free with her magic when no one else is around - and when it’s all over the elf looks ready to kill her. He says  _“mages”_  with the kind of distaste that Anders talks about the Circle with. Hawke tries to deflect his anger, tell him that her life might not be as shit as his is, but it’s certainly not the life of a privileged powerful magister, and then Carver just comes in with “we’ve been  _helping_  you this whole time.”

“I do not wish to sound ungrateful,” the elf - Fenris,  _wolf -_  says, and there might be more if Carver hadn’t cut him off.

“No? Because you really, really do.”

“What does this matter to you?” Fenris asks, and Carver glares down.

“If you have a problem with my sister, you have a problem with me.”

In the end, between Carver’s implied threats and Hawke’s charm and her offer to help clean out the bodies of the magister’s lackeys, they part on friendly terms. The siblings linger behind Varric on the walk back to Lowtown. “You have to be more careful,” Carver says, trying to keep his voice down, but not really doing a good job of it. “You can’t just use magic in front of anyone. You can’t think we know anyone well enough.”

“You didn’t give me this lecture when Varric found out - stop  _lecturing_ me!”

“Well, Varric is - we had just met this elf! Be  _careful,_  dammit.”

“I’m careful!”

Hawke is not careful. It’s not two days later that they end up following a trail of missing templar recruits out of the city, and Hawke snarks at the knight-captain, and Carver looks like he’s going to die or kill her, and then they’re attacked by an abomination and there are shades everywhere, and Hawke flings a fireball into one and wrenches it apart with her hands, from about fifteen feet away. She had managed until that point, Varric thought they would be fine, Fenris had stopped glancing at Hawke every other moment like he expected her to slip up and use magic right in front of a templar. But the shade had put Carver on the ground and Varric knew even before Hawke acted.

“Don’t – fucking – touch – my – brother!” she screams at the abomination, arcs lightning through it and two shades, because her time is up anyway. 

Varric thinks about putting a bolt through the knight-captain’s neck. They could burn him some, make it look like he was killed by the abomination, that they got here too late…

The demons have collapsed into ashes and Hawke races to her brother and hauls him onto his feet. Blood runs down the side of his face but he tries to shake her off. “No, no, why did you do…”

The knight-captain takes a step toward them, shield raised, and Carver is in front of his sister, weaponless. Varric has a clear shot at the Templar’s back. Fenris is watching Hawke. One of his hands is curled tightly against his leg. 

“You’d be dead if you’d had to fight those things yourself,” Carver says to the templar. Hawke has a hand on his shoulder, ready to push him out of the way if the Templar takes a swing at them both. They’re each ready to die for each other. Hawke would take the Circle rather than see her brother hurt. Carver would take the templars rather than see them take his sister.

(Varric wonders what Bartrand would do, in a situation like this.)

“Why are you here?” the knight-captain demands.

“One of your recruits’ sisters was worried about how her brother stopped contacting her,” Hawke says tersely. “Then we poked around in the Gallows and learned that it wasn’t just one recruit who had vanished for weeks, and the one that had come back you had gone after.”

“Have you nothing better to do than to poke your nose into business that is not yours?”

“If there were jobs for Fereldans other than snapping up coin from whatever desperate people who need help and have been failed by the authorities of the city, then yes, I would have something better to –  _ow.”_

Carver elbows her in the stomach. The knight captain steps back and turns, looking at Varric and Fenris now, too. “You are… willing to help the Templar Order?” he asks, looking over all of them, but mostly at Hawke.

“No,” she says, and she blocks Carver’s elbow this time. “I’m helping a woman who’s worried about her little brother” –  _oh_ , Varric thinks – “and I’m helping me and my friends not get killed by a bunch of demons that are trying to infiltrate the land of the living.”

“Ah, so you have some reputation to keep up by arguing the technicalities,” the knight-captain says. Carver’s eyes have finally left his face. He’s looking for his sword. Varric lowers his crossbow. They might be okay. “I will agree that yes, I would be dead if not for your intervention. I will note that it is the rare halberd that can shoot fire on its own, and we will return to the city and concern ourselves more with possessed recruits than your errant weapon.”

Hawke smiles one of the brightest smiles Varric has seen from her, and she relaxes, pats Carver on the shoulder, and moves away from him. “What do you know?” she asks the knight-captain, and they begin to pool their information. Something about a brothel, and the templar awkwardly doesn’t meet any of their eyes, and Hawke laughs her bright laugh.

Carver, though. Carver doesn’t relax, not for the next several days.

Hawke tumbles into the Hanged Man a week or two later, face glowing in a grin, white teeth against her brown skin, blood crusted along her jaw, hair smeared with ash. Carver follows, hair pulled back, bandages wrapping up his upper arm. “We just gave Bartrand the coin,” Hawke says, sliding into a chair across the table from Varric and throwing her feet up on the next chair. Carver yanks it away from her and sits in it, closer to Varric. “He says it’s two days and then we go.”

“How many people is he letting you bring along?” Varric asks. They’re trying to keep it to the minimum necessary, and really, Bartrand doesn’t want humans at all, but if they paid their way, there’s no refusing. 

“He said that me and whoever else still come with you and you could pull in three,” Hawke says. 

“Great,” Varric says. Hawke has turned out to be a good investment, but whatever happens with her and the Deep Roads is all going to be on Varric’s head. “Who’s your two?”

“Who’s our one,” Hawke corrects, kicking her feet up into Carver’s lap. He rolls his eyes and shoves her away. “I dunno, figured we should field that with you if we’ll all be stuck together in the Deep Roads for two weeks.”

“Anders,” Carver says without hesitation.

“Really?” Hawke asks. “I mean, you’ve just about ripped his head off a couple times.”

“Yeah, but he’s a warden.”

“Was a warden.”

“Is a warden. You can’t  _stop_  being a warden. Wardens don’t lose their warden abilities.”

“What the hell is a warden ability?”

“They have…” Carver screws up his face. “I’ve heard they have ridiculous strength and stamina. And they can – communicate? with darkspawn. They always know where they are. They’ll know there’s darkspawn coming from miles away – I mean. Those are the rumors that I heard at – at Ostagar.” He looks down at his hands. “I thought you liked Anders, why are you arguing?”

“I’m making sure that you’re not gonna kill him or he you from being stuck together for so long, underground, in the dark, surrounded by darkspawn, hating ourselves.”

“I can be an adult if  _he_  can be,” Carver says. “And even if he’s not, he’s a healer, if my guts are spilling out but he can put them back and make me okay, I’ll forgive him for anything.”

Hawke laughs. “Fair point.”

They make the trip down to the clinic in the sewers almost immediately after, and Varric’s not sure how they’re planning on dragging the healer away from his charges for two weeks back fighting darkspawn like the life he left behind – but they do. The next evening, they gather everyone in the Hanged Man for drinks. A send-off party; or if things go badly wrong, a farewell. Hawke buys for half of the crew. Varric catches her at the end of the night, on the way out, Carver and Merrill in front of her. "Hey,” he says quietly. Aveline had said something earlier, about the siblings and the expedition, and it got Varric thinking about Bethany and their mother again. “Hey, Bluebird,” he says, because she’s got the makeup on today, Maker knows where she gets it, bright blue that matches her eyes and has the same glowing effect as Anders has, except without, y'know, the  _“possessed by a dangerous spirit/demon”_ thing.

“Heeeeeey best friend, what’s uuuup?” Hawke slurs. She’s had a lot. At the door, Carver rolls his eyes and heads outside. Varric is glad for that.

“You really dead set on bringing Junior along?” he asks.

Hawke’s face changes instantly. Her expression sharpens into awareness, abrupt sobriety, and if there was ever any doubt, Varric can see how she’s made her family name so feared. “If you’re harboring some secret dislike for my brother, now’s not the time to bring it up – in fact, the time to bring it up is  _never,_  because we’re a package deal.”

“Not what I meant,” Varric says, holding up his hands. Hawke’s eyes are still blazing. Suddenly he understands why she still invests in makeup, as a poor Lowtown refugee. “Aveline says to me you’re fools to both go.”

“Aveline thinks you’re a fool, too,” Hawke says tersely. Her words slur again. Varric wonders if that’s an act.

“Not that I don’t want you both along, but have you given any thought to what your mother will feel about all this?”

“We’ve been risking our lives the past year and a half, with the mercenaries, on our own, this is nothing different. I’m not staying behind, and Carver doesn’t want to, either, and I have no right to order him to.” Hawke looks at the table and grabs one of the glasses and drains the dregs. Varric doesn’t know who it belonged to. “If I’d say it’s to keep him safe, so that Mother won’t lose us both, he’d only take it as  _Carver, you’re not good enough, you’re not strong enough, you’re weak, you can’t do this._ ” She shakes her head. “Two weeks in the Deep Roads, it’ll be fun. Gamlen can’t gamble away the Lowtown shack in two weeks. Aveline will check up on Mother. You, me, and Carver will kill some darkspawn and get rich. Some of our merc work has been more dangerous than this. We’ve told Mother all that already.”

She gives him that self-assured grin and leaves the tavern.

Everyone who is heading out on the expedition meets in Hightown in the morning. It’s only dwarves until Hawke, Carver, and Anders arrive. “Everyone all ready?” Varric asks them. They’d better be.

“No,” Anders says. Hawke grins at him.

“C'mon, we’ve got  _two whole_  templar-free weeks ahead of us!”

“Between templars and darkspawn, I… actually, I’ll take the darkspawn. No one gets angry when you kill them.”

The look on Carver’s face screams  _help me._

“Yeah, can you imagine someone telling you to  _not_  kill a darkspawn?”

“Don’t have to imagine.” It’s not just Varric, Hawke, and Carver who give Anders a strange look at that. “I’ve told you that life under the warden-commander in Amaranthine was nothing but a string of unbelievable events, right?” Hawke raises an eyebrow. “How many Amaranthine horror stories do I have to tell to get you to back out of this expedition and go home?”

“I stopped listening to your Amaranthine horror stories when you kept mentioning things and refusing to explain what they were,” Carver grumbles. Varric does not know why he thought they wouldn’t start sniping at each other from the outset. Apparently Carver has abandoned his promise to act like an adult.

“I  _did_  explain what a broodmother is,” Anders says. The way he says it, it’s not going to be a serious answer. Varric doesn’t think he remembers this joke. “They’re the only things that can make the Hero of Ferelden cry.”

Carver’s glare could split rock. Varric knows that Hawke has pulled him out of fights several times that started when some drunken asshole mocked the wardens, the battle of Ostagar, and the Hero of Ferelden all in one breath. It looks like they’re heading towards that again. Hawke was already standing between them, but she none-too-surreptitiously shoulders Anders away.

Whatever else would happen is interrupted by the arrival of Mama Hawke.

“Alright, who’s the old woman here for?” Bartrand asks, staring directly at the two Hawkes, because there’s only three humans here and Leandra’s dark skin quite obviously matches theirs. “How old are these kids, Varric?” he asks as the Hawkes move away from everyone else to bicker with their mother. “What’d you do, snatch them right out of the nest?”

Varric doesn’t answer. He’s trying to listen to the conversation that they’re having. He catches Bethany’s name but little else is said loud enough to hear, up until Leandra finishes a sentence in a crescendo of “your  _baby brother!”_

Hawke throws her hands up and buries them in her hair. “He’s not a  _child,_  Mother! Carver can make his own choices!” She turns in a circle, making a horrified face at Varric and Anders before she spins back into the conversation. Carver speaks quieter; he has his hands on his mother’s shoulders. Leandra still doesn’t look reassured. 

“Humans,” Bartrand grumbles. “You’d think they would’ve sorted things out with Mama  _before_  we have to leave.”

“They did,” Varric says, because Hawke said they did, but – well, maybe she lied, maybe they didn’t; knowing both of them he wouldn’t be surprised, but he has to defend his friends. Funny that, friends; of all the people trying to worm their way in on Bartrand’s expedition, Varric picked these two. He’d heard the name  _Hawke_ before he heard them say it. The infamous Hawke and her brother looked like the best shot at getting the sovereigns they needed. Got a lot more than the coin, too. “And she came by anyway thinking maybe they’ll change their minds this time.”

“I’m sure they would agree to not go had I told them about broodmothers,” Anders says.

“Either tell us what exactly these things are or quit it, Blondie,” Varric says.

Leandra turns and stalks away. Hawke and Carver don’t immediately rejoin the group. Carver says something and Hawke shakes her head and says something, and when Carver doesn’t respond she puts her hand on his shoulder and shakes him a little. He says something and she laughs. They come back to Varric. “We’re ready to go kill some darkspawn,” Hawke says.

There are days that pass by without sight or scent of a darkspawn, and Anders confirms they aren’t just lurking out of sight. “They’re not smart enough to not just immediately attack,” he says. “Well… most of them aren’t.”

“Smart darkspawn?” Carver repeats. “That’s ridiculous.”

“It’s an Amaranthine horror story.”

“I don’t believe anything you’ve said about being a warden, or about the Hero of Ferelden,” Carver says, which causes another one of the dwarves – Bohdan, their merchant and supplier – to enter their conversation. He knew the Hero of Ferelden, he says, and Carver and Hawke immediately clamber for stories. Varric is sort of offended that they have not been so excited abut all of the stories he’s been telling to keep them occupied so far. Bohdan tells them about the time the city of Redcliffe was assaulted by the undead, which, were it not for the fact that Bohdan is renowned for his honesty, Varric would say was completely fabricated. (Carver and Hawke also both agree to having heard about Redcliffe from a few old friends who survived the massacre of Lothering and stayed in Ferelden.)

Anders responds by telling a story of the time with the wardens when the Hero of Ferelden got them attacked by a dead dragon, which is  _definitely_  complete fiction. He does, however, corroborate Bohdan’s next story, about how the Hero of Ferelden – and the King of Ferelden – responded to an assassination attempt by the Antivan Crows by befriending their would-be assassin. 

“If people don’t ever tell ridiculously untrue stories about me like this, I’ve lived my life wrong,” Hawke says. “Make note of that.”

“I really doubt you will ever be anything comparable to the Hero of Ferelden,” Carver says. Hawke claps a hand over her heart like she’s in pain.

It’s not until four days have passed that Anders tells them to be on guard, they’re getting close to darkspawn. The days pass slower after that, waiting, waiting to be attacked, and even though Anders can tell them whether or not they’re about to have company, there’s a tension that doesn’t go away. He and Hawke set most of them on fire from a distance. The giant spiders, though, can’t be foreseen, and Carver ends up with spider guts in his hair and a massive bloody gash down his arm that Anders heals in seconds. “Finally we’re getting some use out of you,” Hawke says.

The first time they see an ogre, it’s one that Sandal has frozen with his enchantments. The Hawke siblings both freeze up, as still as the beast. Hawke’s eyes have gone wide, Carver’s breathing quickens. Carver starts moving first and Hawke grabs him and pulls him back closer to her. “It’s okay, it’s dead,” Varric says, and Sandal agrees, “En _chant_ ment!”

Then the four of them volunteer to scout ahead, give Bartrand the first valuable-looking thing they find, and end up shut up and left to die in the old thiag for their trouble. Hawke and Anders both try to move the stone door with magic, and when that fails Hawke throws her weight up against it until bruises start forming on her arm. Carver grabs her around the waist and drags her away. 

They find a back exit and travel on, find treasure after nearly being killed by a few stone demons, so it’s not a total loss. “Were we down too deep for the darkspawn?” Hawke asks. They haven’t had to fight any of  _those_  for days. Just some living rocks. “Are they just not… here? Not that I particularly miss them.”

“I don’t know,” Anders says. “The wardens’ maps show that they were planning an expedition to parts of the road, from where we entered. I don’t know if they mean to go as deep as we did.” He casts a look around the branching tunnels. “Our entrance was to be their entrance. We’ll have to be careful when we get closer to the surface. I don’t particularly want a reunion.”

Hawke laughs. “Don’t worry, I won’t let them near you.”

Time doesn’t seem to move right down in the tunnels, but Varric thinks it’s about five days after the rock demon when Carver, lagging far behind the other three, stumbles over flat stone. “Can we slow down?” he asks from his hands and knees. “I don’t feel good." 

He must be feeling  _awful,_  to ever admit it. "We’re not too far from the surface?” Hawke asks Anders, who has been navigating, and he nods. The tunnels look familiar to Varric now, too; they’re on the path that they came in on. “We can afford to rest for a bit, then.” She goes to Carver and helps him up to his feet. “And we’re almost home and you’ll be sleeping in a bed again – I bet the estate has really nice –”

She stops. She hasn’t let go of Carver’s arm. Her body has gone rigid. Varric can see Carver’s confused face over her shoulder. “Carver,” she says, and her voice is breathless, pained. “Carver, you’re…”

His face goes from confused to a profound, sad understanding. And he slumps, sinks toward the ground, and Hawke eases him down, clutching both of his hands. Varric and Anders hurry to them. Hawke’s face has gone white, pale, and so is Carver’s, but he’s grayer, dark around the eyes, the veins clearly visible in his skin, gray and black, so sick and wrong that Varric has to look away for a moment. “It’s the blight, isn’t it?” Carver asks quietly. He looks up at Anders.

Anders nods. “It is. I can sense it.”

Well, Varric can  _see_ it.

“I’m going to die, like Wesley,” Carver says, and that’s Aveline’s husband, isn’t it, dead on the way out of Ferelden just like Bethany. “I’m going to die and –”

“Shut up!” Hawke snaps. “Shut up,  _shut up,_  you’re not going to die!” She looks at Anders. “Why are you just  _standing_  there?  _Do something!”_

“The Witch of the Wilds could turn into a dragon but she still couldn’t do anything,” Carver says, but Hawke’s voice only gets louder at that.

“You’re a healer there’s got to be something –”

“I can’t –”

 _“You’re a fucking warden!”_  Hawke shrieks, and her voice echoes about the empty stone walls. “Maker help you, what good are you even if you can’t fucking –”

“ _I_  can’t do anything,” Anders says, holding up his hands and backing away, because Hawke is on her feet rounding on him with a fury that Varric has never seen, “but the other wardens, if we can find them, they’d – have a cure. Of a sort.”

“Oh and you, you don’t think that a cure for the blight is something you should fucking have on hand!”

“I’m not a warden,” Anders says, “and it’s not a simple cure. You have to become a warden and that process is – unpleasant, irreversible, and that’s saying that you survive it at all.”

Varric thinks he smells smoke. Hawke’s fists are balled up tightly and her teeth are still bared at Anders. “And the wardens are for life – I have no illusions that I’m free forever,” he continues. “They, or the Circle, will find me someday.”

“But – for a time.” The anger is gone from Hawke’s voice. It’s desperation now. Her eyes are huge, her face slack. “But for a time you’ve been free, you can get away.”

“I’m so damn tired of running from things,” Carver says, but Varric’s not sure Hawke hears.

“It’s not an easy life,” Anders warns, and Varric thinks he might have heard Carver. “It’s barely a life at all.”

“How does it work – the cure, joining the wardens, getting your – warden powers, whatever in the Void you have –” Hawke throws her hands up in the air and paces in a circle.

“All I can tell you is that it’s extremely unpleasant,” Anders replies.

“You fucking  _said_  that already!” Hawke snarls. 

“The more you keep avoiding the questions, the better and better this sounds,” Carver mumbles, in a tone that suggests that when he says  _better,_  he means the opposite.

Hawke puts her face in her hands. “It’s a chance,” she says, voice muffled. “It’s a better fucking chance than – it’s better than just letting you lie here to die!” Her hands are on her neck now, nails digging into her own skin. “It’s – it’s better than dying, right?” she asks, and Varric isn’t sure who she’s asking. Anders says nothing. Neither does Carver. Varric doesn’t know how much he’s here at all, but he helps Hawke pull him to his feet, doesn’t make her carry his entire weight.

“When the choice was death or the wardens, I chose – well, I didn’t choose at all. I had it chosen for me. Wardens.” Anders sounds like he’s trying to be sympathetic. Varric doesn’t think it’s working.

“Chosen for you?” Hawke asks. All the anger she held for Anders only moments ago is gone. She sounds as though she’s trying to distract herself.

“Conscripted. The wardens can do that. If they want you for their ranks, they can have you, no matter who you are.” He chuckles. “Commander conscripted me right out of the templars’ jaws. They were going to have me executed.”

“Wardens or death,” Hawke repeats. “You’re in good company, Carver.”

“ _He’s_  good company?” Varric finds it reassuring that Carver can still manage sarcasm.

“Well, the two of us are  _also_  in the company of the Hero of Ferelden, since you seem to greatly admire her,” Anders says. “Wasn’t a choice she made, either.”

Not a choice for Carver. The blight, and Hawke, made it for him. Right now Varric wants to kill his brother, and Hawke would do anything to keep hers alive.

“Right,” Hawke says. “Lead us to the fucking wardens, Anders.”

They find the wardens in a mass of darkspawn – “You know, it’s very hard to sense the difference” Anders says right before they round a corner and find dozens of the beasts snarling at them. When they’re all dead, Anders greets the lead warden – Stroud, he is called – like it’s just coincidence they’ve stumbled together, like Anders didn’t flee the order a few scant months ago. 

“Being a warden is no kindness,” Stroud says. “We don’t take recruits out of pity.”

“Nothing in our fucking  _lives_  has been a kindness,” Hawke snaps. “We –”

Anders shakes his head at her, and she falls silent, and he resumes talking. He isn’t –  _begging,_  Stroud to take Carver, but it’s close. Very close, with a side of fatalistic  _“he might die upon trying to join the wardens but it’s certain he’ll die if he doesn’t.”_

“He’s worth your time,” Anders finishes, and adds, “Please.”

Hawke is holding Carver upright with his arm around her shoulders, hers around his waist. Varric thinks she might be coming close to breaking his fingers on the hand she has over her shoulders. “Then the boy would come with us immediately,” Stroud says, “and there is a great chance you will not see him again.”

Carver and Hawke look at each other. “This is not a cure,” Stroud warns. “The wardens are a calling.”

Anders snorts.

“Are… are you sure?” Carver asks his sister.

“Are you?” Hawke asks her brother. “I don’t want you to die,” she adds weakly. “Maker, Carver, I’m  _sorry_. You’ve always protected me and the one time I have to and I can’t save you –”

“What happened to ’ _Carver’s an adult and can make his own choices’_? You don’t need to protect me –”

“– or Bethany, and  _you_  never needed to protect  _me_  but you always did try –”

“Just take care of Mother,” Carver says firmly. “That’s all.”

Hawke passes him off to Stroud and the wardens immediately start away. They move faster than Hawke did, and Carver staggers a little trying to keep up. Hawke looks about to say something, and she hesitates, and then she does call out, “Carver – I love you, you know that, right?”

“I know,” he calls back, turning his head trying to look back at them once more. “Love you too, Sis.”

Hawke folds her arms across her stomach and hugs herself. Her shoulders are shaking and her face is stone. “Come on,” Anders says quietly. “We need to go, too.”

They walk away, Varric and Anders and Hawke, and Hawke keeps looking back, turning and walking backwards watching the wardens leave, watching her brother leave her, to a different path to the surface and to a different life away from her, is this how their story is supposed to end?

And the wardens’ voices fade until the only sound is their own footsteps, and then Varric is suddenly aware that Hawke is not keeping pace with him and Anders. They stop and turn around, and Hawke stands in the center of the tunnel, arms still wrapped tight around herself, staring forward and past them. “Hawke, c'mon,” Varric says.

She drops to her knees and starts to sob. 


End file.
